Tagged With: Xerochrysum

Everlasting Flower

<em>Xerochrysum bracteatum</em> ‘Sundaze Golden Beauty’

Xerochrysum bracteatum ‘Sundaze Golden Beauty’

It’s been a busy week but I managed to get out onto the driveway with my camera this evening. It isn’t a long walk, after all. We have a little, yellow Stella d’Oro day lily in bloom just outside the front door, and I took pictures of that, first. Then I got a few pictures of the flowers on an Egyptian Walking Onion that self seeded from those in the back yard into one of the pots on the top of the driveway. Finally, I took pictures of this everlasting flower, Xerochrysum bracteatum ‘Sundaze Golden Beauty’. It’s certainly bright and as the name suggests, the flowers last. It’s a tender annual native to Australia but they do pretty well here, if given full sun and blooms pretty reliably all summer and well into the fall.

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Strawflower

Strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum)

Strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum)

Cathy bought some strawflower, also known as golden everlasting (Xerochrysum bracteatum) this spring and has it in a container on the back patio. They are quite bright and lovely to see from the kitchen door. As the flowers open, the center is a bright orange that complements the yellow of the stiff petal-like bracts. As the flower ages, the central disk turns brown, as seen here, but the bracts remain. This gives the flowers their “everlasting” common name. They are already basically dry, so they don’t dry out and turn brown, but rather keep their yellow color. Apparently in their native Australia they grow in sweeping drifts in open grassland, which must be quite beautiful indeed.

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Everlastings

Everlastings

Everlastings

I’ve published a photo of these everlastings (Xerochrysum bracteatum ‘Sundaze Golden Beauty’) before. See Wednesday, June 06, 2018. They aren’t quite as fresh as they were then, but if you can find another flower that looks this good after five months in your back garden, with birds, bugs, and the summer heat, I’ll be surprised. Yellow flowers seem to fool the computer in my camera (a Canon EOS 60D) and they come out with way too much blue. It’s easy enough to adjust them back to the original yellow but it’s a bit funny how strongly it wants them to be blue.

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Strawflower ‘Basket Yellow’

Strawflower ‘Basket Yellow’

Strawflower ‘Basket Yellow’

Here’s another of the plants we bought a while back from Fehr’s Nursery. It’s a strawflower called ‘Basket Yellow’. Also known as everlasting flower, the official binomial is Xerochrysum bracteatum although it was formerly included in the genus Helichrysum or Bracteantha. It’s a tender, short-lived perennial native to Australia and treated as an annual here and we have two. This one is pure yellow and the other is red and orange, which is pretty nice. We’ll put them in pots on the back patio and they’ll give us color right through the summer. The flowers, not surprisingly, last a long time. I wonder if that’s where they get their name?

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Red Strawflower

Red Strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum)

Red Strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum)

We’ve had strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum) each of the last few years and I really like it quite a lot. Also known as everlasting flower, it provides color over a really long period. The central part of the flower turns dark but the almost woody bracts keep their color. This year, we happened to come across this bright red variety. I have to say, it’s really a stunner. The yellow one is nice, but this one is just amazing. I think maybe next year I’ll get more than one. I don’t know that I could get tired of this color.

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